“Course

Polymer and composites

Topic

CEP report

Submitted To

Dr-Mohsin Ali Raza

Submitted By

Mohammad Ahmer Ejaz

Roll No

16-MME-S2-336

Section

Semester-5th (Evening)

Department

Metallurgy & Material Engineering

University of the Punjab, New Campus, Lahore”

 CEP problem (1)

Basic information

Following are some basic definition which will be helpful in understanding the problems
we are facing in the task. These definition will give a basic info on what we are dealing
with in the given task

Definitions

 Carbon fiber: fibers made up of mostly carbon atoms and has a dia of 5-10
micrometers of each fiber. They have exceptional strength and high rigidity but low
weight, which makes them one of the world’s most usable material in industrial
application.
 Carbon fiber composite: composites made of carbon fibers as the reinforcing phase
along with some polymeric matrix phase say epoxy resin. Very high strength and
stiffness, Large modulus of toughness with low density having corrosion resistance,
which promotes there usage instead of steel in many applications including aerospace
and marine machinery.
 Drive shaft: a mechanical component used for transmitting torque and rotation and
used usually to connect other component of the drive train where it isn’t possible to
connect them direct or if there is a need of relative moment between them
Statement

Following are the task which we need to complete in order to solve our CEP.

1. Two reasons for the material to have unique and excellent(we need to determine
that why carbon fiber composite has such unique properties while the fiber is only
made of carbon atoms and matrix phase being epoxy.)
2. Which composite has more suitable for this job(there are many materials which
are used to make the drive shaft, other than carbon fiber including metals and
other composite materials)
3. Manufacturing method of the said drive(propeller) shaft(drive shaft is a material
which is made by forging process, to be made by carbon fiber which process is
being used on industrial bases)
4. The shaft spins irregularly and causes vibration(drive shaft is a component of
drive train which is causing a defect of irregular spinning and vibration which will
leads to the ultimate failure of the product. What are the cause of such behavior
and how to avoid them)
excellent properties
 composite materials are very useful materials due to their unique and excellent
properties. Now a day they are even prefer over high strength steel due to the
properties they provide.

1. Specific strength

In industrial application we required product whose weight is low and provide high
strength. In this case, composite materials are a revolutionary achievement. These
material has very low weight and provide excellent properties with high strength
which comparable to steel. Specific strength is a terminology which define composite
material properly.

“specific strength is the ratio of ultimate tensile strength to specific gravity”

Specific strength(ss) of composite is very high. Carbon fiber reinforced composite has
a specific strength which is even high then that of high strength steel.

𝑈𝑇𝑆
𝑠𝑠 =
(𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐 𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑦)

2. Failure

Failure is a problem that industries have to face. Metallic component under stresses
crack and lead to destructive tearing of the component, whereas composite material
doesn’t show destructive tearing rather it is stopped after certain point. In a typical
fiber reinforced composite when a crack is initiated from one fiber it will stop at the
next fiber. Fibers act as crack stoppers in composite material hence it is easy to
control destruction of composite material. In metallic materials there is now crack
stopper hence crack will propagate at high speed and will lead the component to
failure. Cracking is easily visible in composite and can also be tracked down by
adding detector material during the making of the component while metallic
component doesn’t gives this amazing feature.

other materials for drive shaft

drive shaft is produced by using various material which include various metallic and
composite materials. Some of the know materials are lightly briefed below

 Aluminum bronze: Al-bronze with other alloying addition of nickel as NAB or

manganese as MAB are used for making drive shaft. This material is light in weight
and is water resistive. These properties makes it an excellent candidate for making
marine drive shaft. This material was replaced by other material due to its extensive
wear tear during service time.
 High strength stainless steel: drive shafts are manufactured by using various grades
of steel but due to the corrosion of steel in water stainless steel with little additive
alloying of molybdenum is preferred. Chromium while make the shaft corrosion
resistive while molly will enhance its strength.
 Glass fiber reinforced composite: glass fiber reinforced material are also used due to
their excellent properties as compared to steel. They can bear greater impact load to
deformation ratio as compared to steel. Due to their high elasticity they lessen the
stresses on shaft and act as shock absorbers. Their main problem is that they have low
capability to withstand tensile load.
 Carbon fiber reinforced composite: the material which gives the highest amount of
specific strength which is even higher than that of high strength steel. These
composites have excellent properties. Very high UTS and impact load bearing. Their
weight is almost 50% of the steel drive shaft. They are very innovative material which
still under research and is being improved. The most problematic disadvantage is
there price. Carbon fiber composites are considerably expensive as compared to other
materials.
 Aramid fiber composite (Kevlar-49) : Kevlar-49 microstructure consist of rigid
molecules. It has a very high strength which is measured up to be 5 times stronger
then steel. Kevlar-49 has a strength which is comparable to carbon fiber composite
and has a relatively lower density which make it, an excellent material for making
driveshaft.
 Hybrid composites: carbon fiber composite gives excellent properties and is very
expensive while glass fiber composite are cheaper but has lower properties as
compared to carbon fiber composites. To overcome the economical and structural
problem hybrid composites are used. These composite consist of glass fiber and
carbon fiber. A fixed amount of each fiber is used. As the entire component is not
made of carbon fiber its price is lower while its properties are still acceptable.
 Figure 1-properties of various structural materials

Material selected

When selecting a material we need to considered its cost as well. Carbon fiber
composites give us the best possible properties in comparison to other fiber
composites but they are also very expensive. Other composite material also give
considerably good properties. These properties are as

 Lateral natural frequency

 Torsional vibration
 Torsional strength
 Torsional buckling
 Torsional fatigue
These properties were obtained under the fixed range of desirable properties. These
properties vastly depended upon the inside radius of the shaft, thickness of each layer
of fiber and also the fiber orientation angle.

Under all these constrains a drive shaft of steel, Kevlar-49 and E-glass composite
were tested for a easy to understand comparative and following resultant graphs were
obtained(1)
 Figure 2-tensile test result of steel drive shaft

Figure 3-tensile test result of kevlar-49 drive shaft

 Figure 4-tensile test result of E-glass drive shaft

these graphical representation clearly show the superior properties of composite over
ordinary steel drive shaft. These results were within our range required for making
shaft. Flexural and impact test were also performed to clearly show the superiority of
composite over steel drive shaft. As stated earlier carbon fiber has greatest properties
among composite but is expensive, to overcome this deficiency hybrid composite are
used. Hybrid composite of E-glass and carbon fiber have in between properties of
their individual selves but they are also less expensive. A tensile test was conducted
by J. Zhang which supports my claim.
A resultant table is given below

Table 1-various hybrid composites and their tensile strength

composite description Density Tensile test

g/cm3
(C)8 Pure carbon fiber sheet 1.237 Highest
(C2 G2)8 two carbon fiber and two glass fiber sequence 1.327 Similar to (CGCG)8
(CGCG)8 Alternative carbon and glass fiber sequence 1.316 Similar to ((C2G2)8)
(G)8 pure glass fiber 1.508 lowest
(CG3)8 1 carbon fiber and 3 glass fiber sequence 1.460 Slightly better (G)8

Following stress-strain graph was obtained of the above ratios.

 Figure 5-stress-strain curve of hybrid composites

If we look at the above graph we can see that hybrid composite has considerable
strength which is enough to form a working drive shaft.(2)

manufacturing method

carbon fiber based drive shaft are manufactured by filament winding process. This
process is used to produce hollow composite product.

This process include winding of fibers on a mandrel which are coated with
resin(matrix phase). Various factor like thicken of fiber, speed of mandrel, type of
matrix phase will affect the formation of the driveshaft.
 Figure 6-schematic diagram of filament winding process

Irregular spinning and vibrations in the shaft

errors and their remedies

 Cause 1:alignment
Drive shaft is used in a set of three component( thrust shaft, drive shaft and propeller).
The alignment of these component is very critical. If there is even a slight angle
difference the shaft will wobble at its position and will cause vibrations, ultimately
which will leads to failure
 Cause 2:resonant frequency
drive shaft should be rotated above or below its material’s resonance frequency. If the
drive shaft attained the resonant frequency of its material it will cause vibrations
which may cause severe cracking of the drive shaft.
 Cause 3:bearing and bushes
Bearing and bushes of the drive shaft are made of alloy steel. As compared to drive
shaft which is made of carbon composite, steel will erode early. Wear and tear of
these will also lead to irregular spinning and vibrations in shaft.
 Cause 4:rotator
To rotate the drive shaft a rotator is used which, with time undergo wear tear. When
rotator is damaged it will also cause problem in the spinning of the driveshaft.

Remedies

 The three component are installed with perfect alignment. They should be rechecked
in case any uncertain noise is produced.
  Drive shaft should be spin with a frequency higher or lower than the resonant
frequency of the material. Another method is the addition of damping spring which
will dampen the effect of resonance produced.
 Bearing and bushes should be kept properly lubricated so the friction is reduced to
minimum.
 Rotator should be made off piezo-electric material. Such material produce magnetic
field which will rotate the drive shaft using magnetic field. This will produce zero
friction and we will have a long lasting rotator.(3)

Figure 7-schematic diagram of a submarine shaft system

Reference

1. (“research article: Design and Analysis of Drive Shaft using Kevlar/Epoxy and
Glass/Epoxy as a Composite Material by P. Karthikeyan, page#5-8”)
2. (“research article: Glass/Carbon Fibre Hybrid Composite Laminates for
Structural Applications in Automotive Vehicles by J. Zhang, page#70-72”)
3. (“research article: vibration analysis and control of rotating composite shaft
using active magnetic bearing by Dhramvir Singh, page#378”)

CEP problem (2)

Statements

Following are the problems which we will discuss in this report. With the given data it
is easy to narrow down our options for determining why these defects occurred in this
process

1. During thermoforming walls of the component often tear-off.(why this problem occur
and how it can be avoided)
2. Manufacturing techniques(plastic sheet can be converted to required shape component
by various manufacturing process. Describe some techniques and explain the best one)
3. During thermoforming the sheet sticks to the mold(why this problem occur and how we
can avoid it)
data provided

This is the data which is provided. This data is inadequate. It only deals with the
component form. We do not know of what material the component is made of and for
what use the product is made. With such data we can vaguely solve our problem
simply depending upon the dimensions of the component.

 a component of 1000cm2 total surface area having a thickness of 1mm is produced by

thermoforming.
 The blank sheet used for making this component has a total surface area of 500cm2
and a thickness of 2mm.
Manufacturing techniques

Manufacturing processes

Sheet forming is done by many technique. Some give us excellent dimension and
finishing while some are cost efficient. Some of the know techniques which are utilize
for making plastic product is briefly described below

Plug-in Thermoforming: in this problem the sheet was converted to component by

means of thermoforming. In this process a heated sheet is clamped between mold and
a plug. This plug presses the sheet in to the mold and the sheet is converted to the
component of required dimension. High surface finish is obtained. Product obtained
from this process are recyclable. Its major drawback is that intricated shapes cannot
be formed by this method. Controlling wall thickness is also a major problem of this
method.(1)
 Figure 8-schematic diagram of plug assist thermoforming

Snap-back forming: this process uses vacuum to produce component of uniform

wall thickness. A mold is placed in a vacuum chamber with a hot plastic sheet
clamped over it. By generating vacuum the sheet will uniformly spread on the mold
and a uniform wall thickness component is obtained. This method is very good but is
expensive as we required a proper vacuum pump system to generate a controlled
vacuum environment inside the vacuum chamber.(1)

Figure 9-schematic diagram of snap-back forming

Incremental forming: this technique doesn’t required any expensive dies for
changing the shape of the sheet, instead a pressing tool called hemispherical tool is
used to press the sheet in intricate manner to produced the required component. This
 method is not commercially used rather only used for making experimental works due
to inaccurate dimensions of the components.(2)

Figure 10-schematic diagram of incremental forming

RIM(reaction injection molding): RIM is another method which is used to produce

plastic products. This technique is well developed and is commercially used. Main
advantage of this technique is that intricated shaped components can be produced.
Procedure of this technique is very simple. Hot plastic is injected to the desired
shaped dies and we obtained our component. This process is a bit expensive then
thermoforming and it also need raw product in the form of pellets instead of sheets.

Figure 11-schematic diagram of FIM

Process selection
 Incremental forming is instantly reject since precise dimensions are given for the
product we need a machine which can be used to create the component with more
precise dimensions. Among the other three machine we compare FIM with
thermoforming technology. The reason is that FIM is a vastly different machine
which is used to produced intricate shaped product. Here we required a component
formed from a blank sheet which is best done by either plug-in thermoforming or
snap-back forming process. The major difference between plug-in thermoforming and
snap-back forming is that of vacuum chamber. In thermoforming simply a plug will
force the soften plastic sheet to take the shape of the mold while in snap back vacuum
pressure is used to spread the sheet on the mold. These methods are most commonly
used to produce product form blank sheet. If we were to compare these two machine,
snap-back machine give us a product of better accurate dimension. Due to the
vacuum, the sheet is uniformly spread over the mold which give as a component of
uniform thickness. Vacuum chamber is expensive and if we can bear a little difference
of component wall thickness we can use plug-in thermoforming process. In my
opinion since the statement states accurate thickness of the component we should use
snapback forming process.

A comparative study table will easily clarify my choice of process

Table 2-comparative study of properties of various forming machines

Component properties FIM PLUG-IN SNAP-BACK

Machining required High(upto 33%) low Very low
Process cost low High(upto50%) Slightly higher
Weight heavy light light
recyclable no yes yes
Draft of mold required 1⁰ 0⁰ 0⁰
pressure High injection high Low
Vacuum zero zero high
durability low high high
contamination high Very low Very low
Dimension accuracy high medium high
Overall cost high medium medium

According to this table each technique has its pros and cons but according to the
requirement

Snap-back will fit perfectly. While machine selection is important, material selection
and dimension based properties are also calculated. Following two parameter must be
considered while selecting a blank sheet for producing certain component.

𝑑𝑒𝑝𝑡ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡

𝑑𝑟𝑎𝑤 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜 =
𝑤𝑖𝑑𝑡ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡

𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑎 𝑜𝑓 𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑒𝑡 𝑏𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔

𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑎 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜 =
𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑎 𝑜𝑓 𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑒𝑡 𝑎𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔
 Draw ratio will determine wall thickness variation. As no information is given about
depth of the part we cannot calculate this value but in case of component formed by
snap-back process it should be minimum

Area ratio is used to calculate the thinning of the sheet which will occur due to shape
change of the sheet. As the area of sheet before forming is 500cm2 and is 1000cm2
after thermoforming the area ratio is 1:2. According to literature if area ratio is 1:2
then the thickness of the sheet is reduced by half. By the given data the sheet is 2mm
and on forming of component it is 1mm which totally agree with the theoretical
results.(1)

Defects and their remedies

There are two problems that occurred during this process

1. During thermoforming walls of the component often tear-off.(why this problem

occur and how it can be avoided)
There are multiple reasons which can cause such problems(1)
 The hot sheet is pressed by a plug to force the sheet to take the shape of the
mold. If the speed of plug is high it may damage the walls of the component
leading to tear.
 If the sheet is heated above the limit it will get too soften which will be easily
tear off during thermoforming process
 Especially in case of thin sheet thermoforming if the temperature of sheet is
low it will also undergo tearing.
 A certain distance is needed between plug and mold which is calculated
according to the sheet thickness of the component. If this gap is not enough
the sheet will be damaged during forming.
Remedies

 Sheet is properly heated by heaters upto the softening point of the material.
This temperature control will rule out the possibility of wall tear due to the
sheet being too hot or too cold.
 Speed of plug is also controlled properly and its speed will be limited to avoid
any tearing
 Distance between plug and mold is calculated before placing the sheet. Each
setting of thermoforming machine will allow only a certain thickness sheet to
be molded in to required component. A sheet of greater thickness will required
new setting to avoid tearing of wall during thermoforming.
2. During thermoforming the sheet sticks to the mold(why this problem occur and
how we can avoid it)
There are two reasons which can cause this problem(3)
 Mold temperature is too low which cause sheet to stick on the mold walls.
This will delaminate the surface of the produce which will cause structural as
well as economical decrease of the component
  Additive such as pigment if they are not compatible with the base resin/plastic
it will cause delamination of the walls of the component. The delaminated
portion will stick to the walls of mold.
“Remedies

 Increase the mold temperature in 5 °C increments until the delamination is

eliminated. Then increase by an additional 5 °C to compensate for thermal
fluctuation in the mold
 Check with suppliers of any additives to make sure the proper grade is being
used. Also, confirm that all materials are properly identified to ensure that
incompatible materials are not being mixed.”
Reference

1. (“plastics: materials and processing by A Brent Strong, 3rd edition

chapter#16,page#535-540,554,560 ”)
2. (“polymer sheet hot incremental forming-an innovative polymer forming approach by
Sirdhar R. page#447,448”)
3. (“https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Plastics Molding %26 Manufacturing/Defects”)